City wants to tear down Bridgeton Villas, replace with affordable senior housing

BRIDGETON — The city is trying to acquire Bridgeton Villas and eventually turn the plot into an affordable senior housing complex, Mayor James Begley said on Tuesday.

City Council approved the move at its Tuesday night meeting with an ordinance, which was passed on its second and final reading.

The ordinance states that the city will try to buy the property from the complex’s owner, Patterson-based Hamilton East Associates , LLC., “either by voluntary agreement or, if necessary, by condemnation, at a price which will not exceed fair market value.”

Begley said he wasn’t sure what was deemed fair market value for the property. But officials had approached Hamilton East, he said, and the company asked for more than what it had paid for the property.

According to tax records, Hamilton East bought Bridgeton Villas from Silver Spring, Md.-based Levitt & Soble in 2007 for a little more than $3.5 million.

He said officials here should be able to tap into two different state funding programs to cover nearly 90 percent of the acquisition cost.

“But it’s not chiseled in stone,” Begley said, adding that the city may have to go to a bond to cover part of the cost.

Begley said he wasn’t sure of the names of the state programs he hopes will pay most of the bill.

He added that he wants to see less units than the 153 the Villas currently contains.

Begley and councilman Nicholas Salvatore said the Villas owners have not cooperated with city officials trying to reign in crime in the complex.

Officials had for a time adopted a policy of sharing crime statistics and suggestions with owners and managers of the city’s apartment complexes and leaving them to voluntarily help reduce crime.

As for the Villas, Salvatore said, “If you look at the (crime) activity, the disruption in the neighborhoods...there’s an issue there.”

“Bridgeton Villas has been non-responsive to the city’s concerns,” he added.

A call to the Villas during normal office hours Tuesday afternoon reached only the answering machine, on which a message said the message box was full.

But Jean Reynolds, the property manager there, had said last month that management did what it could legally to keep crime under control. Without convictions or evidence of illegal activity, she said, landlords cannot evict tenants.

When it’s possible, she said, landlords act, and they evict tenants who violate the terms of their leases.

Reynolds was responding in part to a study presented last month to city council by police chief Mark Ott, in which he compiled crime statistics from eight city apartment complexes.

According to the study, the Villas had the second highest number of reported incidents out of ten crime categories, with a 185 total incidents between June 2008 and November 2009.